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I have a photo of Aaron Sorkin‘s Parking Space. Look at my face; I take my role as a ‘fan girl’ seriously.

Another lady on the Warner Bros. Tour leaned over to me and said “Don’t you just love The West Wing?!”. I tried to hide my shame but couldn’t, I shouted to the skies above “I HAVE NEVER SEEN THE WEST WING!!”.

An audible gasp was heard across the entire WB backlot and a well-dressed mob suddenly appeared screaming “Blasphemy!” over and over. They surround the tour cart, rocking it from side to side until it tipped over. Men swore, women and children cried.*

*Some dramatisation may have occurred for the sake of good storytelling.

Yes, it’s true. I was a Sorkin Fan Girl who had never seen The West Wing. This award winning political TV drama may have been all anyone was talking about at one point in pop culture history, but the series first aired in 1999, I was 19 years old at the time. I couldn’t give two hoots about American politics, fictional or otherwise. I cared about boys.

I jumped into the Sorkin Camp after seeing the sadly cancelled show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I was all in after the first episode. A TV show about making a TV show. You had me at hello.

Aaron Sorkin’s writing was at a pace I hadn’t seen since Dawson’s Creek (Yeah I said it), and the pop culture references were obscured in a Life is like a box of chocolates kind of fun way. All of this, of course, is what Sorkin has become famous for. That and his way of writing and rambling about topics we as the viewers might not even understand but making us damn well enjoy it anyway.

I was officially in love with the guy. By the time I saw The Social Network, I wanted to marry him. If you haven’t seen Sorkin’s writing in The Social Network, then you haven’t seen Shakespeare the way it’s meant to be done. It also features a nice little cameo by the man himself.

The fellow Sorkin fan girl who I saw the movie with and I both ‘squeed’ (it’s a word!) [Editor’s note: technically it’s an onomatopoeia] with delight when he came on screen. The rest of the cinema patrons stayed quite. Some angry ushers with torches and a well-dressed mob took care of them.

Now there was no excuse for my delay in seeing The West Wing, and the only defence I can come up with is that I’m not solely a fan of Sorkin’s. Not for nothing, I’m a fan-of-all-trades as it were. It’s hard work liking everything and takes more time that some would expect.

So, here we are now, a few days after the US release of Aaron Sorkin’s fourth TV series, The Newsroom. I’m sitting in my lounge, surrounded by West Wing DVD’s, feverishly marathon-ing my way through all seven seasons. I’m completely in love with the entire cast (particularly Bradley Whitford) and I think I’m actually learning something!

It is of course everything I expected, hoped, and more, from a Sorkin series. I’m only at season three and I already want to post my ovaries to the god among men that is Aaron Sorkin.